I started the blog Bureaucracy for Breakfast in 2010, and it was a comedic look at unemployment, the economic divide, and the lifestyles of the 1%. It was featured on Marketplace on NPR, AOL News, Huffington Post, and Chelsea Handler’s Borderline Amazing Comedy. I have been interviewed by ABC 20/20 for a segment about the Rich Kids of Instagram, and in addition to writing about Hollywood, celebrity, and excess for Forbes I write about pop culture and entertainment for The Hairpin, Ask Men, Salon, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Studio System News. My first book, BROKENOMICS, is coming from Seal Press spring 2015. You can find me on Twitter @TheElf26.

Fox's 'Dads' And The Miley Cyrus Effect

It’s hard to deny that Seth MacFarlane is talented, funny, and wildly successful. FoxFox hit the jackpot with Family Guy, which earned over a dozen Emmy nominations and became an international hit. His hilarious feature Ted, about a hard-partying talking teddy bear, raked in over $500 million worldwide and spawned a sequel. Just this week MacFarlane bought a three-story Beverly Hills building because he evidently needs more space “as his empire grows.” And then there’s Dads.

The Fox sitcom premiered last night, and although MacFarlane didn’t write the show, he did love it enough to slap his name on it as an executive producer (the creators are Ted/Family Guy writers Wellesley Wild and Alec Sulkin). He saw something promising in the story of two thirty-something babies – I mean men – who find their lives upended when their co-dependent, racist, sexist, cheap fathers move back home. Giovanni Ribisi and Seth Green play BFFs who run a gaming company together. The insufferable dads are played by Peter Riegert and Martin Mull. Earlier in the summer, long before the show premiered, the hate Tweets and damning reviews came rushing in. Yesterday, Buzzfeed’s Kate Aurthur wrote a post called “Why The New Fox Comedy ‘Dads’ Is Actually Evil,” which sounds melodramatic but it’s actually not too far off.

The show’s problems stem from the fact that it’s racist and sexist, and not in a groundbreaking, All In The Family way. Over the summer, the Media Action Network for Asian-Americans pleaded with Fox to reshoot the pilot because it involved an Asian-American character having to dress as a giggling “sexy Asian schoolgirl,” and saying things like, “My dad beat me with a math book till I was 16.” Lines like this reminded me of MacFarlane’s “We Saw Your Boobs” musical number at the Oscars last winter. I don’t think MacFarlane is evil, but he can be clueless, and his comedic talents don’t always hit the mark. He might be building an empire, but he’s not perfect, and not everything he touches turns to gold. Sometimes, it turns to racist, sexist rubbish.

Granted, he didn’t write Dads, which is so unfunny it actually made me angry – pretty much the opposite emotion the creators were going for I’d imagine. Some of the banter sounded like a series of lame, 140-character Tweets. Maybe the original script was hilarious, and the tone was lost in translation. That’s entirely possible. The racism and sexism definitely didn’t translate well (does it ever?), and it makes you wonder if Fox execs refused to reshoot the pilot because they welcomed this kind of negative attention. It’s better to have people talking about you than not talking about you, as they say.

We’ll see if Dads benefits from the Miley Cyrus effect – despite the horrible reviews it debuted to 5.6 million viewers last night. Maybe people were watching as they were waiting for the new comedy Brooklyn Nine-Nine (hilarious, and devoid of racism/sexism – imagine that) and the return of New Girl and The Mindy Project. Maybe – sadly – people were watching because all that social media venom got them curious. It got me curious, so I guess I’m one of those 5.6 million viewers.

I don’t know if I’ll watch next week. In Dads, Vanessa Lachey plays Ribisi’s wife, and the fact that she was literally never seen outside the kitchen baking and bitching (and actually wearing an apron) made me feel a little murderous. This is 2013, and I know some women bake things and it’s helpful to wear aprons so you’re not covered in flour, but they really couldn’t give her something else to do? The sad thing is I almost want to watch it again to see if she’ll ever get out of the kitchen, or if they’ll keep her there, like a sassy kidnap victim who only knows how to beat eggs and sift flour.

Maybe I should take Amy Poehler’s observation to heart: “I don’t believe in ironic watching, you’re either watching or you’re not.” We’ll see if morbid curiosity trumps common sense. For now, I’m sure Fox execs are celebrating. People tuned in, and the criticism is most likely a faraway murmur.

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